I just finished watching a the movie Rudy, after having read Acts 10 earlier today. I gotta say, I'm a little excited from it and praising God that I enjoyed them both in the same day so that I could enjoy the connection.

Rudy, if you're not familiar with the movie, is based on the real life story of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger who desperately wanted to play football for Notre Dame all of his life. The catch, however, was that Rudy was a below average student from a working class family. Not only that, but he was pretty small in both height and weight, especially so relative to a college football player, and never possessed any athletic talent or prowess. He just played hard.

Late into the movie Rudy admits that he knows that he simply wasn't born a football player, whatever the desires of his heart. This doesn't matter to him though. He never quits, he never stops doing everything that he can to participate as a member of the team.

Rudy was given the heart of a Notre Dame football player, if not the body and he eventually resigned himself to the implications of that situation while holding onto hope for something better despite everything. The end result was that Rudy improved the game of the entire team and through the experience gained the opportunity to always be counted as a Notre Dame football player. Something that only a relatively small number of people can enjoy.

Long before Rudy, however, there was Cornelius. Cornelius wasn't working-class, of course, but he was physically poor in that he was a gentile and not a Jew. Nonetheless, he continued doing all that he could to honor and glorify the God of Israel despite the unfortunate incongruity between his birth and heart.

His prayers where a sweet incense before the Lord when most of Israel's were a foul stench. God so loved Cornelius that he assigned to him the honor of educating Peter, thereby dramatically improving the "game" of the whole Church! Not only that, but Cornelius' relatives and close friends we all brought into the kingdom.

Now if there's any mistake about the purpose God had for Cornelius or that perhaps Cornelius' ultimate salvation was the point of the whole exercise, then let me point you to an important fact: Peter never finished delivering the Good News of the Gospel what before the Holy Spirit of God descended on the Gentiles there.

Their hearts had already been prepared for Christ long before Peter showed up. It was Peter's heart that needed work. It wasn't the hearing of the Gospel from Peter that was necessary, but rather, it was the pouring out of the Spirit upon Gentiles that Peter needed to see.

As a bit of a separate thought, I find it so encouraging that God preserved the Roman Centurion Cornelius and all the other gentiles present until that day. I don't' know what God had for them after that moment, but I know it's a hard fact that no army, no nation, no king, no anything had the power to kill Cornelius or any of his relatives and close friends before that day. Think about that for a moment to. The implications, at least to me, are huge.